Transcript Slide 1

Introduction to Localization
Localization World
Conference Berlin 2009
Richard Sikes, Angelika Zerfass,
Daniel Goldschmidt
Agenda
• Introduction – the problem, problem definition
• Tools
• Localization Process 101
Agenda
Localization, internationalization, Globalization, translation,
regionalization… too many “ation” terms…
During the next three sessions we will make sense of them for you
Agenda
Globalization
to understand requirements (for going global)
Internationalization
to enable products to meet requirements
Localization
to fulfill requirements
The problem
The Problem
• A known company developed a powerful product for CRM (Customer
Relationship Management System)
• The first and main market was, as usual, the USA
• The board decided that it is time to penetrate new markets: Europe, FarEast, Middle East
The R&D department claimed – no problem, we are fully UNICODE…let’s go!
The Problem
Ouch…
The Problem
#1 – String Externalization
• All the GUI (graphical user interface) had to be translated to the target
languages
• But lots of strings were hard-coded (written directly into the code)
The Problem
#2 - Sorting
• After translating the GUI, the first installation took place in Spain
• Some customers were unhappy: Many indexes and lexical orders were
corrupted
• In Traditional Spanish, the letters “CH “ and “LL” have their own
positions in the sort order
• A, B, C, CH, D…K, L, LL, M, … etc.
– Curioso
– Chalina
– Luz
– Llama
The Problem
The second installation in Germany had three problems:
– The search function didn’t work
– The financial and numerical functions were buggy
– Many strings were cutoff in the GUI
The Problem
#3 –Collation
• Combining characters:
Ü ( Latin Small letter U with diaeresis 0x00DC)
U¨ (Latin Small letter U 0x0055, Combining diaeresis 0x0308)
ç (Latin Small letter with Cedilla 0x00E7)
c ̧ (Latin Small letter C 0x0063, Combining Cedilla 0x0327)
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fi=fi
Case sensitive/insensitive
Accent sensitive/insensitive
Upper case ß (Latin Small letter Sharp S)= SS
The Problem
#4 – Numerical format
• 4.500 (UK) ≠ 4.500 (DE)
• 4,500 (UK) = 4.500 (DE)
• 4.500 (UK) = 4,500 (DE)
The Problem
#5 - Length
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German strings are usually longer than in most languages
English: Redo
German: Wiederherstellen
English: Skip
German: Zeilensprung
The Problem
#6 – Date Format
• The client from Spain called after 2 months; the license had expired earlier
then expected!
Does 01/07/2006 mean:
“July, first 2006”
Or
“January, seventh 2006”?
The Problem
#6 – Date Format, Calendars
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The first day of the week is Monday... or Sunday (weekend)
Year length
Week numbers (ISO? Other?)
Last Monday
The Problem
#7 - Encoding
The installation in Russia was catastrophic:
• All imported data from the legacy systems was full of question marks.
• All data inserted by the user couldn’t be retrieved from the database
• This was the first installation using a non “Western European” encoding!
The Problem
#8 - Segmentation
• In Japan the problem even got worse:
the parsers stopped working.
• In Japanese, there are no white spaces in-between words.
The tokenizers didn’t work properly
Tokenization is the process of demarcating and possibly classifying sections of a
string of input characters.
The Problem
#9 – Politics
The Hebrew website had some minor issues:
When localizing a website for Israel, which map shall we use:
• The one with Judea and Samaria
• The one with the Palestinian Authority
• The one without the occupied territories
“Judea and Samaria” vs. “occupied territories”
The Problem
#10 – Grammar
• Singular? Plural?
• Male, female, something else?
• How to translate concatenated strings?
The Problem
#10 – Grammar
String concatenation example:
The Winfax Installer has found %s.
• Case
– Microsoft
• S=“Outlook”
– Netscape
• S=“Netscape Mail”
– Notes
• S=“Notes Email”
– Else
• that you have no email provider.
The Problem
#11 – Graphics & Symbols
The OK gesture:
• English-speaking: OK
• France: zero, nothing, worthless
• Mediterranean: a rude sign
• Japan: money
• Brazil & Germany: vulgar, obscene gesture
The Problem
more issues
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Color scheme
Time zone
Paper sizes (A4 vs. Letter)
Phone numbers
Address format
Temperature
Measurements
Culture is Everywhere
“If I'm selling to you, I speak your language.
If I'm buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen (then you
must speak German)”
Willy Brandt
Problem Definition
Terms
Globalization
• Adaptation of marketing strategies to regional requirements of all kinds.
Internationalization
• Engineering of a product to enable efficient adaptation of that product to
local requirements.
Localization
• Localization is the process of adapting a (software) product and
accompanying materials to suit a target-market locale.
Terms
Locale
• A locale is a geographic region defined by a combination of language and
cultural norms. “Locale” is not to be confused with “language.”For
example fr-FR, fr-CA, fr-CH.
Fully supporting locales requires:
– Globalization – to understand requirements
– Internationalization – to enable products to meet requirements
– Localization – to fulfill requirements
Globalization
Internationalization
Localization
GERMAN
FRENCH
CHINESE
LOCALIZATION
Adapting software and
JAPANESE
accompanying materials to
suitPORTUGUESE
target-market locales
INTERNATIONALIZATION
Engineering of a product to enable
efficient adaptation to local requirements
GLOBALIZATION
GLOBALIZATION
Expansion
of marketing strategies to
Expansion
of marketing
strategies
to
address regional
requirements
of all kinds
address regional requirements of all kinds
Costs that are generated in one place become visible in
another.
Globalization
Expansion of marketing strategies to address regional requirements of all
kinds
Globalization
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IMPLICATIONS:
International market research
Prioritize local markets through business case analysis
Development of separate business cases for emerging markets
Product planning with serving of diverse markets in mind
Tracking of revenues by locale
Extensive liaison with foreign sales offices and resources
Globalization is a mind set as much as a task set.
Internationalization
Engineering of a product to enable
efficient adaptation to local requirements
Internationalization
IMPLICATIONS:
• Removal of cultural assumptions (such as date formats)
• Implementation of support for global norms (such as language character sets
or accounting procedures).
Internationalization is an expansion of product capability to be local-generic.
Localization
The process of adapting software and accompanying materials to suit a
target-market locale with the goal of making the product "transparent" to
that locale, so that native users would interact with it as if it were
developed there and for that locale alone.
Localization
IMPLICATIONS:
• Language and character set support
• Support for various format settings such as decimal delimitation, time/date
display, and other such norms.
• Conformance with locale-specific technical norms.
Localization imposes constraints on software’s regional applicability.
Localization
• Success
Product appears to be developed in the target market
• Failure:
We can easily notice that the program was adapted
(Please read the instructions on the package of hygiene products in the bathroom…)
Internationalizing the UI
The Other Side of the Fence
What Localization Managers Often Face Internally
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Lack of Understanding re Localization Issues and Processes
Poorly Internationalized Software
Underestimation of the “Ripple Effect” Caused by Changes
Inadequate Version Control
Core Project Slippage
Marketing Managers Who Can’t Plan Ahead
Changing Priorities
Inadequate International Quality Assurance
FUD About Localization
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Concatenation – Definition
• Building sentences out of two or more separate parts using
replaceable string variables.
• Changes in situation will cause the calling string to call a
different sub-string. This can lead to various types of
problems:
– Linguistic logic hiccoughs
– The translator can’t determine what or where the substrings are
• Programmers LOVE concatenation!
Concatenation – Example
The Winfax Installer has found %s.
• Case
– Microsoft
• S=“Outlook”
– Netscape
• S=“Netscape Mail”
– Notes
• S=“Notes Email”
– Else
• that you have no email provider.
Concatenation – Excel example
TITLE
ACTION
There is a problem w ith the failure storage file.
@504@
There is a problem w ith the catheter operational
param eters file.
@504@
ALIASES
504 Report the error to Custom er Service.
505 Replace the catheter.
506 Click Ok to continue.
507 Disconnect both ends of the @510@ and reconnect them .
508 Disconnect both ends of the @511@ and reconnect them .
509 Continue the procedure. If the problem persists, shut
dow n the system and restart it. If there is still a problem ,
@504@
Concatenation
String probably not found by translator or hard coded.
CGI code snippet in PERL
sub print_form {
my ($content);
my ($template,$HTML) = @_;
open (FILE, "<$template") or die "Couldn't open $template: $!\n";
while (<FILE>) {
s/{{(.*?)}}/$HTML->{$1}/g;
$content .= $_;
}
close FILE;
print $content;
}
sub error_out {
my (%HTML);
$HTML{CGI} = $cgi;
$HTML{ERROR} = shift;
print_form("$path_templates/error.html",\%HTML);
}
CGI code snippet in PERL
sub print_form {
my ($content);
my ($template,$HTML) = @_;
open (FILE, "<$template") or die "Couldn't open $template: $!\n";
while (<FILE>) {
s/{{(.*?)}}/$HTML->{$1}/g;
$content .= $_;
}
close FILE;
print $content;
}
sub error_out {
my (%HTML);
$HTML{CGI} = $cgi;
$HTML{ERROR} = shift;
print_form("$path_templates/error.html",\%HTML);
}
Introduction to Localization
Tools and Evaluation
Localization World
Conference Berlin 2009
Angelika Zerfass, Richard Sikes, Daniel Goldschmidt
Possible
file preparation
Project Management / Workflow Management
Source
language
files
Software Localization Tool
Selfdeveloped
tool
Target
language
files
API
Alignment
Terminology
Extraction
Term base /
term list
Translation Memory Tool
Word
count
tool
possible text extraction
file conversion
Macros
Editor of TM tool
QA tool
Creation of
target language file
DTP
Software Localization Tool
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A tool to test the localizability of software
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Pseudo Translation
A tool to translate text in software applications
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GUI (graphical user interface)
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Menus, Dialogs
Error messages, system messages
A tool to adapt the GUI to the translation
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Resizing dialog boxes
Flipping contents of dialog boxes for right-to-left languages
Adaptation of icons, graphics
Dialog view
Navigation
Translation list
Translation Memory Tool
– A system (most often a database) that stores source
sentence plus translation as a pair, a
so-called „segment pair“
– During translation the translation memory compares the
segment to be translated with the segments in the
database.
– If a match is found (same or similar segment), the
translation is offered as a suggestion
– The translator decides if the translation can be accepted or
has to be changed.
– The TM system does NOT translate by itself, it is no
machine translation system!
Translation Memory Tool
ORIGINAL
VERSION
NEW
VERSION
SOURCE
TARGET
The 4-mm tip electrode of
the steerable 7 F
cryoablation catheter is
provided with the
refrigerant halocarbon
(Freon ®) by a double
lumen in the catheter shaft.
La pointe de 4 mm du
cathéter de cryoablation
(d'un calibre de 7 F) est
alimentée en réfrigérant
(protoxide d'azote) par un
double conduit situé dans
la tige du cathéter.
The 6-mm tip electrode of
the steerable 7 F
cryoablation catheter is
provided with the
refrigerant nitrogen oxide
(N2O) by a double lumen in
the catheter shaft.
La pointe de 4 mm du
cathéter de cryoablation
(d'un calibre de 7 F) est
alimentée en réfrigérant
(protoxide d'azote) par un
double conduit situé dans
la tige du cathéter.
SDL Trados
Workbench
and TagEditor
Terminology
window
TM window
Translation fields
in Word
MemoQ
Sentence and
terminology
matches
Source and target language columns for translation
Localization Processes
Translation Memory Tool
Software Localization Tool
Pseudo translation
Import into TM
File preparation
Export of segment
pairs for TM
Extract translatable
segments
Export of
Terminology
Translation of
software
Import into
term base
Translation of
Online-help,
readme files,
manuals,
web pages,
packaging...
Terminology Management
• Components of TM tools or stand-alone solutions
• Connect to the TM systems and localization tools
during translation
• Manage additional information like explanations,
definitions, classifications and graphics
• Ensure the consistent use of terms over the whole
project through term checks
• Term extraction (monolingual and bilingual)
Term base
Term Extraction
• Concordance tools
– Extraction all words and word combinations up to x words
from a monolingual document
• Statistical extraction
– Extracting the most frequent terms from monolingual or
bilingual sources
• Linguistic extraction
– Extracting by rules and with the help of language analysis
(e.g. all noun phrases up to 4 words)
Term Extraction
Alignment
• Old source and target language documents are read
into the alignment component of the TM tool
• The tool segments the files and tries to connect the
segments that belong together, thus creating
segment pairs
• A translator checks the alignment
• Results are imported into a TM system for reuse with
new translations
Example: Déjà Vu
Project Management and
Workflow Tools
• Project Creation in TM tool
– packaging of project files
• Workflow Tool
– Automation of processes (file conversion, pre-translation,
packaging, sending out package to assigned translator…)
• Project Management Tools
– Offers and invoicing
– Data on customers and vendors
TM
• Interactive translation
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MT
• Machine translation
– interactive process
– fully automated process
– almost all language pairs
possible
– only works for the language pair
the system was created for
– creation of a repository
– text is usually pre-edited and or
post-edited
– Recycling of translations
independent of the format
of the source document
– good systems are relatively costly
– very fast
How do you evaluate which tool is
right for you?
Test the tool…
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Get a demo from the vendor with your own files
Get a testing license (usually 4 weeks)
Run a pilot project
Discuss useful features with users of the tool
– Translators, project managers of service providers,
developers
• Create a test matrix and run a small project
What to evaluate
• General
– Vendor company, number of developers, user
base, responsiveness…
• By requirement
– List what the tool should be able to do
• By feature
– Test the existing features for importance and
performance
Coffee Break – 15 Minutes
Introduction to Localization
Localization Process 101
Localization World
Conference Berlin 2009
Angelika Zerfass, Richard Sikes, Daniel Goldschmidt
Localization - Recap
Localization - Recap
The i18n and l10n problem is a mixture of:
• Technical Issues
• Cultural Issues
• Political Issues
• Language / Linguistic Issues
• Esthetical Issues
Localization - Recap
The 3 layers approach:
• Transportation
• Application
• Display
Localization - Recap
Layer 1 – Transportation (“handle with care” sticker)
moving data from A to B
Usually not locale dependant
Localization - Recap
Layer 2 – Application
doing something with the data (e.g. sorting, searching casing, date/time
format etc.)
usually locale dependant
Localization - Recap
Layer 3 – Display
Presentation layer
Localization readiness (resources externalization)
usually locale dependant
Localization – Recap
Internationalized Software Architecture
MIDDLE TIER
CLIENT
TIER
PRESENTATION
LAYER
BUSINESS
LOGIC
DATA
TIER
DBMS
Tier 1
Tier 2a
Tier 2b
Tier 3
Localization vs. Internationalization
• Internationalization -> Generalization
• Localization -> Customization
Localization vs. Internationalization
Localization
English
Localization
Hebrew
Internationalization
Localization
Chinese
Localization
French
Globalization
=
Internationalization
+
N X Localization
Localization vs. Internationalization
• Internationalization is an essential process for preparing the product for
localization
• The deliverables of the i18n process are two:
– Generic version of the application
– Software components of the Localization Kit
Localization vs. Internationalization
• You don’t need to actually read and write 22 languages
• i18n is software engineering, not a linguistic process
– There are cross-over concepts, however, such as:
• Allowing sufficient white space for language growth in documentation
• Not hard-coding page references in books
• Planning website architecture to support multilingual content and navigation
• i10n is mainly project management!
The Process
Who’s involved?
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Content providers (Editors, technical writers, R&D teams etc.)
Localization project managers (on publisher side, on vendor side)
Localization engineers (on publisher side or vendor side)
Translators (In house, freelance, Single Language Vendor, sub contractors)
Reviewers (In house, freelance, Single Language Vendor, sub contractors, regional office
employees)
Quality Assurance specialists (on publisher side, on vendor side)
Finance personnel
Program managers
Product marketing managers
Webmasters
A short To-Do list
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Researching and gathering components to be localized
Preparing the content (text segmentation, resource extraction etc.)
Pseudo localization and proactive i18n QA on core code
Leveraging against existing TMs
Effort estimation, costing
Management Approval
Work assignment
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Translation and localization
Proof reading / Editing / Reviewing
Testing, if applicable
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TM updates, maintenance of linguistic assets
Delivery
Billing
The Traditional Process
Leveraging
Content
providers
Preparing
Effort assessment
Linguistics
assets:
TMs
Terms
Glossaries
Content
Repository
Translating
Content
providers
Reviewing
Packaging and
delivery
Updating
Linguistics
assets
Preparation
Preparation
• Research and collect all relevant components - be sure to have everything
you need
• Create LBOM (localization bill of materials)
• Prepare the content (text segmentation, resource extraction etc.) using
the appropriate tools.
Preparation
• Run a pseudo-localization to test localization readiness
• Check:
– Externalization of strings
– Adaptation of the GUI (length, date, time, currency etc.)
– Handling of string concatenations
– Software functionality
– Data entry, transfer, persistence, and redisplay
– and…
Preparation
• Prepare glossary – add new terms/update changed terms
• If you don’t have a glossary – prepare one, send it for translation and
approve it BEFORE work starts
• If you as a client own the TM – provide vendor with most recent version
• If your vendor owns the TM – be sure the last (clean) version is being used
(and also try to change your contract so that you get ownership of the TM)
Preparation
Prepare a “Localization Kit”:
A Localization Kit contains everything that anyone who touches
the project needs to know in order to do their work.
Localization Kit includes:
• Product:
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Text strings
Menus
Dialogs
Shortcut keys
Images
Functional l10n components (tax rules)
Documentation and OLH files
…
Glossaries
TMs
Localization Guidelines and Expectations
Preparation
• Leverage the content against your TMs
• Get comparative quotes and time estimation
• Obtain information regarding resource arability
Preparation: The Vendor
• The vendor is your best friend!
• However, this friend sells words (for translation)!
Preparation: The Vendor
What to consider:
• Rate: 25-30 $cent/word
• Pace: 1500 words/day
Price should include:
• Translation
• Editing
• Proof reading
Not included:
• Project management
• QA cost
• DTP
Consider training the vendor’s translators and the proof readers: it will give
them insight into the product
Preparation: The Vendor
Be sure to establish the following:
• Processes
• Escalation process
• Location of translators
• Single focal point
• Localization material
• Deliverable
• TM ownership
• What are you paying for
• Bug fixing responsibility
• Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Preparation: The Vendor
Be sure to determine what you are paying for:
• Price per word
• Discount for repetitions
• Word counting in source language or target language?
• QA?
• Bug fixing?
Translation
Translation
Basic premises:
• Translation is expensive
Example:
– 1 million words = $250,000 per language
– A 10 languages localization project easily could incur cost of $2.5M
• Glossaries are required
• Translation memories are required
Context in Translation
Translators need to know what to translate and what not to translate
(tags, code etc.) Expose only translatable content to them – don’t run
the risk of having your code broken
Translators need to know the context:
•Surrounding text, dialog etc.
•i.e. “display”
German: anzeigen (to display)
German: Anzeige (a display)
Testing / QA
Testing / QA
5 types of testing:
• Before localization
– i18n testing
– l10n readiness testing (pseudo localization)
• After localization
– Cosmetic testing
– Linguistic testing
– Functional testing
Testing / QA
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Effort Estimations:
i18n QA: the same timeframe as the original acceptance tests
Pseudo localization: the same timeframe as the original acceptance tests
Cosmetic/ linguistic – one pass on all dialogs/ screens/ menus etc. Usually
a matter of days.
Functional testing - the same timeframe as the original full test cycle of
the original product
Testing / QA
i18n testing:
• Is the software really locale independent
• Does your software know how to handle data in different languages
(double-byte enabled?)
Testing / QA
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Cosmetic Testing:
Check to see if the UI is broken
Dialogs, buttons, menus etc. – have they been properly localized
Chinese words are shorter, but the characters are higher!
French words lengths…
Testing / QA
Linguistic testing:
• Does the translation make sense in the context?
• Edite vs. Edition
• Share vs. Shares
Testing / QA
Functional testing:
• Full acceptance test of the product in target language
• Usually not done due to cost and time
Testing / QA
In country reviewing:
• Resources in or from the country/market, who know the target market
and target language to check if localization makes sense
Document Quality Control
• Document QC is another kind of Quality Control, and is just as important
(sometimes).
• Issues to watch for:
– Linguistic
– Technical
– Layout
• Pagination
• Screenshots and surrounding text in sync
• Cross-references and hyperlinks
• Conditional text
Project Wrap
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TM update
Delivery
Invoice Management
Post-mortem
Planning Tips
Planning Tips
• Kick off meeting
– Touch on a all aspects of project, size, timeline, number of
languages etc.
• Analysis of source meeting
– Outline potential L10n/I18n issues with source code
• Scheduling and budgeting
– Based on size, timeline, number of languages etc. schedule
resources, quotes,
• Terminology setup
– Create glossary leveraging existing glossaries, adding additional
terminology by using tools such as SDL Trados TermExtract.
• Preparation of source Material
•
and…..
Planning Tips
• Translation of Software
– Translation, editing and proof-reading (TEP) of software
• Translation of documentation
– Translation, editing and proof-reading (TEP) of documentation
• Testing the Software
– Testing of software for functional, linguistic and cosmetic defects
• Screen Capture
– Capture screenshots for documentation, help files
• DTP
– Prepare the hard copy of the documents
Planning Tips
• Start planning from the end: focus on the release date
• Make sure that you work within a realistic timeframe – allow extra time, in
case things go wrong (buffers, slippage, holidays)
• Check the required time for QA
• Estimate number of words, make sure what your are paying for
(source/target)
• Rule of thumb:
Number of words / 2000 = number of translator days for translation
– Software = slower
– Flowing documentation ~ faster
– Diminishing returns as more translators added
Planning Tips
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Keep in mind that translations can start before all resources are ready
You can start translating your material once the GUI is frozen
Think about running QA for several languages in parallel
Remember that the process might require several iterations
Pitfalls
Pitfalls
“We are not doing any localization nor translation. We will give our
distributors in each country a discount, and they take care of it”
Careful – consider the following:
• Who is in the end responsible for quality?
• Who owns the Intellectual Property?
• No leveraging of handling the localization for all countries at once.
Pitfalls
“There is no need for a localization process, once we release the product,
we will prepare Excel files with the strings to be translated”
Careful – consider the following:
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Has your software been prepared for localization?
Be ready for surprises in the code
Consider pseudo localization
Translation out of context can result in errors and/or excessive project
management time
Pitfalls
“Philippe, from engineering, speaks French fluently, lets ask him to
translated the GUI of our product!”
Careful – consider the following:
• Languages are evolving – therefore best translations will be done using incountry translators
• What about localization?
• What about using translation tools?
• Leveraging, Terminology, Glossary?
Q/A
• Ask now……
Thank you for your attention
Backup slides
Jargon
Jargon
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g11n
i18n
l10n
Sim ship
MLV
SLV
SLA
Translation Memory (TM)
Segment
Matching (100%, ICE, Partial, Fuzzy)
Leveraging
Alignment
Glossary, Glossary building
Terminology management
Machine Translation
Localizing Marketing
Translating Guideline
NDA
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Software l10n
Resource
Resource ID
Context
Localization Tool
QA
Linguistic QA
Cosmetic QA
Functional QA
Reviewing
Proof Reading
Localization Readiness
Pseudo Localization
Single source
Word count
CMS
Publisher
Preparation
Localization Kit includes:
• Product:
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Text strings
Menus
Dialogs
Shortcut keys
Images
Functional l10n components (tax rules)
Documentation and OLH files
…
• Glossaries
• TMs
• Localization Guidelines and Expectations
Preparation of software
• User Interface
– Pseudo-translation to test for localizability
• Are buttons large enough for text
expansion?
• Is there hard-coded text in the
software?
• Can the characters of the target
language be displayed correctly?
– Hiding or locking of non-translatable text
with a software localization tool
– Re-use of old projects by alignment
– Setup of a terminology list
Preparation of documents
• Internationalization of documents
– Spaced layout
– “Simplified English”
– Single Sourcing with conditional text or text layers within one
document
– Content Management System with text modules
• Text preparation
– Text extraction or file conversion into a format that translation
memory systems can deal with
– Hiding non-translatable text layers / columns / paragraphs
Other preparation steps
• Terminology
– Extraction, collection, creation of lists (Excel) or term bases
• Alignment (re-use of old projects)
• Setup of process automation (Workflow Management)
Testing
Software Testing
• Before translation
– Internationalization testing
• Is the software locale independent
• Will the software be able to accommodate different characters sets, date
formats, measurements…
– Localization testing
• Pseudo translation or simulated translation to find out if the characters of the
target language can be displayed correctly
• Will expanding text of the target language still fit the buttons and text fields
• During translation
– Spell check and terminology checks
– Checks if the translator did not forget any access keys (underlined letters
that allow calling a menu or menu point by keyboard)
– Checks that the same access key has not been used twice in a menu
Software Testing
• After translation
– Cosmetic checks
• Check the UI if not broken
• Layout of dialogs, buttons, menus etc.
• Chinese words are shorter, but the characters are higher!
• German words’ lengths…
– Linguistic checks
• Does the translation make sense?
– Functional test
• Full acceptance test of the product in target language
• Has the translation in any way “broken” the functionality
• Are data input, stored, manipulated, and redisplayed
accurately?
• (often not done because of time and cost constraints)
Document Testing
• Resources in or from the country/market, who know the target market
and target language to check if localization makes sense
– Spell check, formal check (punctuation…) and terminology check on translated
text
– Cosmetic checks
•
•
•
•
Pagination, layout should be checked and possibly redone
Correct index
Cross-references, hyperlinks (online-help)
Correct screenshots
– Linguistic checks
• Does the translation make sense?
• Do software and documentation correspond?
– Functional test
• Cross-references in online help
• Hyperlinks on web pages
What does it take to be a good
L10n Project Manager?
What does it take to be a good
L10n Project Manager?
• Adaptability / versatile thinker
– think outside the box, come up with non-orthodox solutions
• Technically inclined
– know the basics of what an L10n engineer’s daily work entails
• Localization industry experience
– translation background, editing background
• Attention to detail
– see defects, potential pitfalls, have a good eye for layout/design
• Skilled in writing and presentation
– comfortable writing in native and potentially other languages
What does it take to be a good L10n
Project Manager?
• Interest in and awareness of foreign cultures:
– read foreign language books, watch foreign language movies, enjoy
“diversity”…
• One or more non-English languages
– helpful to know basics or the concept of non-European languages
(i.e. Chinese, Japanese…)
• Instinct for prioritization
– know how to get your ducks in a row…
• Pragmatic, realistic approach to problem-solving
– have processes in place, but don’t follow them slavishly if faced with a worse
case scenario
and……
Localization Quality Assurance: Skill Set
• Comfortable with diverse language software versions
• Ability to distinguish between languages, i.e. German from Dutch
• Versatility of OS, Platform, & Database language versions
• Generic QA methodology
• Creation and usage of scripted QA tools